Review

When you mention the two
composers names featured
on this album,
you wont really elicit
much recognition from even
the most
fervent film music fan. Just
because Frank DeVol and
Jeff Alexander
arent household
names like Jerry Goldsmith
and John Williams
doesnt mean they
didnt compose great
film scores. Frank
DeVol had a stint writing for
television shows such as
the Brady
Bunch while he worked
occasionally on films
like Whatever
Happened to Baby Jane
B> and Academy Award
nominated Guess
Whos Coming to
Dinner (one of three)
before dying in 1999
at the age of 75. Mr.
Alexander has had a lesser
known career, but
has contributed music for
popular films like
Support Your Local
Sheriff and The
Affairs of Dobie Gillis
and had a chance
at the first film revivals of the
T.V. series The Wild
Wild
West. The score for <
B>Dirty Dingus Magee
provides a sampling
of the "western" music that
Jeff Alexander was known
for later in his
career.

The score for The
Dirty Dozen runs less
than thirty minutes
for a film that chimes in at
two and a half hours,
almost the same
ratio of film to music as
David Shires work in
All The
Presidents Men.
The memorable "Main
Theme" doesnt
appear in the film until
twelve minutes into the film,
a bit after
one of the more somber
openings to film till
Spielbergs
Saving Private Ryan
B> in 1998. This isnt
to say the film
is a downer, its far
from it, with most of the
score on this CD
being comedic themed in
nature. Also of note is that
the arrangements
for The Dirty Dozen
are not the same that
appear in the film,
with edits in the pieces
appearing to help tie some
of the cues
together as a complete
tracks as well as the vocal
cues being
re-recorded versions.
Overall, its a pretty
good score that
helps add more to
sequences such as the
construction and training
montages just like a good
score should. The action
cues are also well
done, with a stereotypical
"hero" theme nature to them
as would be
expected for films done
around these stories and
times in Hollywood.
This half of the album is the
same content of the original
LP and no
additional material has
been added, possibly due
to licensing and
availability of source
material.

For Dirty Dingus
Magee, Jeff Alexander&
#146;s music
transitions almost
indistinguishably from Mr.
DeVols cues from
The Dirty Dozen. It
continues along the same
almost
overcompensated themes
but with an even more
comedic western bent. If
it wasnt spoken for,
the music for Magee
B> could have
easily been lifted for use in
something like Blazing
Saddles,
The Flim Flam Man
or Cat Ballou
(scored by Fank DeVol).
Unlike its
predecessor on the album,
the music for Magee can be
easily placed in a certain
period style that usually
isnt
referred if a similar film
would be made today. It&
#146;s still a fun
score to listen to if you are a
fan of this film and music
from films
of this particular genre and
time period. Its also
an example
of some of the revival of the
western that occurred in the
latter
half of the 1960s and early
1970s, harking back to the
heyday of
these film in the 1940s and
50s. To note, that the music
here is
quite a contrast to the
"spaghetti westerns" that
were also being
produced at the time in Italy
and most often scored by
the likes of
Ennio Morricone and Riz
Ortolani . These were quite
a bit different
than Mr. Alexanders
take heard here, almost to
dark and serious
compared to the nature of <
B>Magees
music.

For Chapter III records,
releasing these scores
begins their
series of re-releases of
music from , albeit, not
classic films, but
fan favorites nevertheless.
Even if its not
considered a
classic like Patton,
The Dirty Dozen
still ranks up
there as one of my favorite
World War II movies. As for
Dirty
Dingus Magee, I can&
#146;t claim I know it well,
but its a
perfect bookend for this
album. I congratulate
Chapter III on making
an effort to release these
and other former film
scores in such a
fashion, I can now stop
hunting for old vinyl
versions of these out
of print score albums and
get to hear them in digital
re-mastered
quality.